And The Bride Wore Nothing

March 16, 2006

Queen Victoria popularized wearing a white wedding dress as a symbol of purity of heart and innocence. As time has gone by, many have interpreted the color white as implying a bride is innocent and pure by spectators inferring that she is a virgin. Countries around the world have adopted the white tradition even in China wear traditionally brides wore red, the color of happiness. Now the Chinese have come up with a new trend. It drops the virginal dresses, makes many parents see red and gives an entirely new meaning to the term, "blushing bride."

According to a story by Richard Spencer, China correspondent for the UK News Telegraph, instead of changing wardrobe options in their wedding photos, some couples are choosing to keep the wardrobe optional altogether.

Naked wedding photos are the newest fad. Carefully arranged bouquets of flowers and strategically placed bodies in careful poses manage to keep the pictures tasteful as far as not presenting full-frontal nudity. Nevertheless, many brides wear nothing more than a veil and a contented smile of a girl entering wedded bliss.

Many conservative Chinese see such an idea as a symptom of confusion as the youth of China experience more and more of American past and drift further from the confines of traditions once held fast during two millennia of Confucian conformity and three decades of Maoist Puritanism. However, that may be digging pretty deep for a truth that lies on the outside of every bride supposedly.

On the China Radio website beside the portrait of a bride with headdress, pink roses, stockings, gloves and nothing else, the just married woman named Angel is quoted as saying, "If we can record how nice we look when we are young by taking photos, why shouldn't we? People grow older, fatter and uglier."

That Angel sure is romantic and she seems to have such lovely thoughts of her future married life. At any rate, I bet when she threw the bouquet everyone was too distracted to notice who caught it.